Resort to Murder

by TP Fielden

  ‘Thank you,’ came the bitter response.

  ‘On the other hand, do you have the know-how to tinker with the Rejuvenator, and in any case, if you had, would you have had enough time to get down to the bottom of the garden again? Probably not. But if not you, then who?’ He turned the pages of his notebook back.

  ‘Clearly someone else with something to gain – or in this case, preserve – was Rudyard Rhys, the editor. He was here, he was angry, he had the opportunity and he had the motive – he didn’t want the fiasco of that wartime operation coming out into the open.

  ‘The only thing about Mr Rhys,’ went on Topham resignedly, ‘is that he is clearly not up to the job of murder.’

  ‘He was a spy. All spies know about death.’

  Topham smiled. ‘Spies come in all shapes and sizes, and levels of competence too. I don’t think Mr Rhys was all that competent.’

  He went on, ‘Then there are the Lazarus League, but they scattered to the four winds in the panic after your husband’s body was found, and we have no way of knowing who they were, or where they are now. Eventually, we’ll track them down but looking at who they are, and their dotty nature, they don’t figure highly on my list. Any more than does Lamb, too broken-down an old carthorse. Or Mrs Lamb, who it appears never left the kitchen. Nor again the gardener who was with you – he was given a stern interrogation and it’s clear he stayed down at the bottom of the garden, a ten-minute walk from here. That leaves one person.’

  Permilla Larsson sat bolt upright, her face pale underneath its golden tan.

  ‘Your son, Gus Wetherby.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes, Mrs Larsson, yes. Motive, means and opportunity. An ambitious young man in a big hurry to prove himself – maybe to his real father, maybe to you, maybe to himself, who knows – but not one to waste time climbing to the top of the mountain when he can parachute in.

  ‘He knew the Rejuvenator business was holed below the waterline. He reckoned he could pull a cheap trick by admitting its failings publicly – thus, as you describe it, betraying the man who had brought him up as his own – and by jumping on the publicity bandwagon by coming up with the Youthenator. I repeat, Mrs Larsson, he is very ambitious – do you understand what I’m saying?’

  Pernilla put her head down and stared at her lap. ‘All right,’ she said after a long pause, ‘all right. I will confess that my son and my husband did not get on well. Ben was forever pushing Gus as he was growing up, whereas a child like that needs to be pulled. When Gus had finished his National Service, which was not a great success, Ben took him into the business, but pretty soon Gus saw the flaws and weaknesses in the Rejuvenator – well, Gus called it “a big con”! I don’t know what that means but he did not believe, as Ben believed, in the ability of the Rejuvenator to restore good health.

  ‘And,’ she added, sighing, ‘Gus was always the kind of child who’d take a clock down from the mantelpiece, pull it apart, and then not bother find out how to put it back together again. There’s a lot of that in what he attempted to do with the Rejuvenator. To be honest, I don’t believe that his version would be any more effective than Ben’s.’

  ‘His stepfather found him out. His plotting. His big plan.’

  ‘Yes. Inspector, I can’t tell you how agonising it is to see the two people you love most in the world at each other’s throat. Ben did not become so successful by being a patient or forgiving man, and he threw Gus out of the house. I pleaded with him to give the boy another chance, but he was beside himself with rage – his stepson destroying his business the same way he did those dratted clocks!’

  ‘Mr Wetherby wasn’t in the house at the time of your husband’s death.’

  ‘It’s a large house, Inspector, I can’t say.’

  ‘Your husband surrounded him with wealth but gave him no money, is that correct?’

  ‘His expenses were paid – tailor, dentist, and so on – but he was expected to work voluntarily until he was made a partner in the business. I have an income of my own, and I used to give him a weekly allowance.’

  ‘Mr Wetherby would have resented that, living in a house like this.’

  ‘He had everything he needed, Inspector.’

  ‘Except independence. He must have hated that.’

  ‘I really couldn’t say.’

  ‘So, not only ambitious and – I think we can deduce from the betrayal to Fleet Street – malicious, but resentful and devious. Ready to drug his stepfather and, you might say, rifle the till.’

  ‘That’s my son you are talking about!’

  ‘In the matter of murder,’ said Topham sadly, ‘certain niceties go by the board. And I’m afraid that all you tell me has borne out the deduction I made soon after your husband’s murder – that the person who committed the crime was your son.’

  ‘Complete rubbish,’ said Pernilla, avoiding his eye and looking nervously out on to the terrace, ‘I don’t believe you. But if you want to find out the truth, here’s your opportunity.

  ‘There’s my son. Out there. Go and arrest him – if you dare!’

  TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Suki Raffray.’

  ‘I told you never to mention that tart’s name!’ snapped Geraldine Phipps.

  ‘Sukisukisukee,’ warbled her grandson in a falsetto voice. He started to make a calypso of it.

  ‘Oh, Gavin, stop, please stop!’ cried the old Gaiety Girl, looking imploringly first at Gavin and then the Plymouth Gin.

  ‘Well, you wanted to know,’ said Gavin Armstrong with barely hidden malice. ‘And I went and found out for you. Mrs Raff and your Mr Cattermole are holed up in her flat in Chelsea, and she’s threatening to make an honest man out of him.’

  ‘At his age?’ gurgled Mrs Phipps. ‘Too late to become honest now. What an absolute stinker!’

  ‘Told you so,’ said Gavin happily. ‘Time to cut him out of your life, Gran. And while you’re at it, isn’t it time you made things a little bit easier for yourself? Get out a bit and smell the roses? When did you last have a holiday?’

  Mrs Phipps was unused to such solicitude in a man. ‘What are you up to, Gavin?’

  Her grandson picked up a bottle of beer and forcefully wrenched off its cap. ‘This dump,’ he said, looking grimly round the theatre’s office, ‘it’s no place for you, Gran. Dirty and depressing.’

  ‘It’s home.’

  ‘You can’t be serious. It’s a run-down old ruin that would benefit from a can of petrol and a box of matches, that’s what it is.

  ‘You might say the same about your grandmother.’

  ‘Hah, I might, Granny, I might! But look, you shouldn’t be stuck in a hole like this – your glory days were in the West End with stage-door johnnies waiting to take you to Ciro’s and the Café Royal. Compare all that to this place – not exactly Berkeley Square, now, is it?’

  ‘What are you saying, Gavin? That I should give up the theatre here, just when we’re beginning to make a nice profit?’

  ‘Only because of me, that profit, Gran. Only because I brought Danny and the boys here – against your better judgement – and started to show you how to fill a theatre.’ Gavin gulped greedily at his beer, and for the first time Mrs Phipps realised she disliked her grandson, and quite a lot at that.

  ‘Well,’ she said firmly, ‘if you think I’m giving up the Pavilion you can think again.’

  ‘Time to retire,’ said Gavin smoothly, but with an iron edge to his voice. ‘You’ve had your share of the box-office take, but from now on it’s all mine. I’m taking the place over – old Ray is never coming back, and the lease is in his name.’

  Mrs Phipps put down her gin. At moments of crisis she could do perfectly well without its support, she was remarkable that way. ‘No, Gavin, no, this is mine! I’ve supported Raymond for the past fifteen years and I know every inch of this place. It is I who is taking over, not you!’

  ‘Darling, how old are you?’ The endearment was not kindly spoken.

  ‘That’s neithe
r here nor there. And anyway, I thought you had a – how d’you say – a Number One beat group on your hands – isn’t that enough to be going on with?’

  ‘They’ll only last a few more records then that’ll be it. People are saying the beat craze will be over by Christmas. As entertainers they’re not really very talented, y’know.’

  ‘That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve watched them, and they know how to galvanise an audience, and whether I like or hate their music, that’s what show business is all about – generating excitement. They certainly do that all right. And one of them is remarkably good-looking,’ she added.

  ‘They’re a rotten bunch. Anyway, come Christmas I plan to be down here full-time.’

  Mrs Phipps viewed him with distaste. ‘Doing what, precisely? What on earth do you know about entertaining the traditional type of audience we normally attract here in Temple Regis?’

  Gavin finished his beer and tossed the bottle aside. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Granny, don’t you get it? Rickety old place like this, an accidentally dropped cigarette, a nice stiff south-westerly to fan the flames – the whole place’d be gone in no time at all. I pick up the insurance and move on. I promise to get out of your hair, and keep out, after that.’

  Mrs Phipps looked at him in horror.

  ‘You’re just like your father.’

  ‘I take that as a compliment.’

  ‘Before he went to jail, he had everything going for him. Good school, good regiment – well,’ she corrected herself, ‘it was the Life Guards, and they’re such a bunch of stinkers I should have known how things would turn out. But the one thing that can be said for him was he socked enough cash away before he was arrested so you could still go to Harrow.’

  ‘Do you ever hear from the old chap?’

  ‘That question rather implies that you don’t, Gavin. He’s your father, for heaven’s sake!’

  ‘In Tangier last time I heard. Best place for him, I’d say.’

  Mrs Phipps stood up. The crumpled, gin-doused figure had disappeared and in its place there was a straight-backed, clear-eyed, commanding presence. If there was more than a hint of Lady Bracknell about her, well, hadn’t she played opposite old Raymond in that production of The Importance of Being Earnest where Gerry Hennessy had broken Ray’s arm and stolen his part? ‘Terrifying’ had read the reviews, and they weren’t talking about Ray or Gerry.

  ‘Gavin, I can’t disinherit you because you never figured in my will. Until very recently I’d seen very little of you – rather like your father,’ she added imperiously. ‘I was happy to give you a roof and, I will confess, delighted when you brought that band of brigands to fill the empty space left by Raymond.

  ‘This theatre, Gavin, has been part of my life for a long time now and it will continue to be a part of my life. Your idea of setting fire to such a …’ she searched for a suitable word ‘. . . wonderful and ancient landmark simply appals me, and really what I should be doing is telephoning the police to warn them.’

  Gavin said he didn’t care if she did.

  ‘What I am going to do, though, is something else. I am going to close the theatre as from today and you can take your brigands back to London. Let them make another record and go and bother the good people of some other seaside town.’

  ‘You can’t do that, Gran. I’ve just …’

  ‘I can and I will. In fact, I just have.’

  ‘But … I’ve just got Jack Good to agree to come down here! The boys missed out on his TV show, Oh Boy!, but he’s got a new one starting in the autumn and they could get a residency on it.’

  ‘When this improbably named Mr Good shows up he will find the theatre dark. With you and your cocksure chums stuck outside in that van, because, Gavin, I’m afraid I can no longer offer you a roof.’

  You could see the young man swiftly recalibrating. ‘OK,’ he conceded, ‘OK. We’ll go back to the arrangement we had before – you get your cut and I get mine. Fifty–fifty.’

  ‘It’ll be sixty–forty now. I need to increase the insurance. Just in case.’

  Before Gavin could agree, Valentine Waterford poked his head round the door. ‘Hello,’ he said, not sensing murder in the air, ‘just popped in to see how things are going? Thought I’d write something new about the boys. Our readers don’t seem to be able to get enough of them!’

  This was actually a lie – the residents of Temple Regis were hot under the collar about Danny and the noisemongers, and sincerely wished the boys’ van in the sea off the end of the pier. It was the holidaymakers who were mad for the No 1 group – but since they rarely bought the local paper there wasn’t much point in writing about beat groups in the Express.

  But Valentine had been instructed by Rudyard Rhys to find something to draw his readers’ attention away from the thing they were far more interested in – the deaths of a beauty queen and a famous magnate – and was determined to find a new angle.

  ‘Hello, Mrs Phipps,’ he added solicitously, ‘hope you’re well?’

  ‘All the better for seeing you, dear boy,’ she twinkled happily at this reminder of profligate old Sir Jefrye. How much nicer was this young man than the grandson she’d been burdened with!

  ‘Come outside,’ said Gavin curtly, ‘there’s something I can give you.’

  They went out leaving the old trouper to her Player’s Navy Cut and her Plymouth Gin, safe in the knowledge she’d seen off an enforced retirement. Slowly, they wandered together down to the theatre auditorium where Danny and the brethren were fiddling with their equipment.

  ‘Here’s your story,’ said Gavin, ‘we’re turning the Pavilion into a permanent Pop Palace. Temple Regis will be the first venue in the country to have a rolling rocking menu, seven days a week, twelve months of the year. Beat groups from all over the country will come down here and their fans will come flocking after them– just like Danny and the boys.’

  ‘Heavens,’ said Valentine, ‘what an extraordinary idea, when everyone is saying beat music is already dead on its feet, it’s jazz that’s the coming thing! And what will the townsfolk say, d’you think? They seem to have done a good job tolerating the mayhem Danny and the boys have created, but twelve months of the year? How long have you had this up your sleeve?’

  ‘Been working on it for ages,’ said Gavin, who’d only just thought it up.

  ‘And what will Mrs Phipps do? She’s used to more, er, traditional entertainment I’d say. How’s she going to fit in to this new plan?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Gavin, ‘she’s retiring. She’ll be gone in the next few weeks.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Oh yes, only don’t write that just yet. Give her a chance to find the words to make the announcement herself. It’ll be an emotional moment for her.’

  ‘I can see that,’ said Valentine drily. He liked Mrs Phipps and was slowly getting the gist of what was going on.

  ‘Give me a minute or two, I’m just going to sort something out, then I’ll tell you all about the Pop Palace,’ said Gavin, who needed to do some quick thinking. ‘By the way, which school were you at?’

  ‘Ah, well, one doesn’t often talk of schooldays. Rather a long time ago.’

  ‘I was at Harrow,’ said Gavin, pugnaciously.

  ‘Since you put it like that, then, I spent a bit of time at the other place.’

  ‘Thought so,’ said Gavin triumphantly. ‘Can smell you lot a mile away. But you can’t have been called Valentine there, it’s so effeminate!’

  ‘How perceptive of you,’ said Valentine, not in the least moved by the manager’s patronising tone. ‘Actually, I was called Bart.’

  ‘Eh?’ Gavin frowned. ‘Why Bart?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’

  Valentine went to sit in the back stalls and watched the band setting up their instruments for the evening performance. He caught the eye of Boots McGuigan – the most photogenic of the lot, even if he had a voice like a foghorn – and signalled to him.

  ‘We’re doing
a warm-up in ten minutes,’ said the bassist, ambling over. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Bengt Larsson.’

  ‘What about him?’ The musician looked angry at the mention of the old man’s name, but not defensive.

  ‘Why don’t you tell me all about it?’ This vaguely worded invitation, Valentine had discovered, was a useful journalistic trick when you had absolutely no idea what question you should be putting.

  ‘About my mum?’

  Bingo, thought Valentine, this works!

  ‘Yes, your mother,’ he said encouragingly. The canary was about to sing, but his notebook was stuck in his pocket and he didn’t dare drag it out in case the yellow bird took fright and flew away.

  ‘That bloody machine of his killed her,’ said Boots without further encouragement. ‘We weren’t close, Mum and me, but why the hell should Larsson get away with it? Living in that castle, telling those lies, making money hand over fist while people were dying?’

  ‘Go on,’ said Valentine, hoping he would be able to remember all this so he could write it down later.

  ‘There were ten of us in our council house in Hackney. Too many,’ said Boots. ‘I was moved out when I was twelve to live with my Nan and I didn’t see much of them after that. But bringing up all those kids was more than she could manage. She bought one of those Rejuvenators on the never-never. I s’pose she thought it could give her back some life – she was exhausted from the moment she got up to the moment she went to bed – anyway, it killed her. Don’t know how, she wasn’t electrocuted, it was something to do with her nerves, but it was the Rejuvenator what done it.’

  ‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ said Valentine, genuinely.

  ‘We come down here, we’re playing to the crowds, hoping to make some money, when Gavin announces he’s struck a gold-plated deal with this man Larsson’s son.’

  ‘Stepson, I think.’

  ‘I don’t care who the hell he is. Apparently they were at school together and the son is making a new version of this machine and selling it to teenagers. We were going to help promote it. Well,’ said Boots, ‘I was never going to agree to that, was I? What’s more, I had no idea that this – what’s the word – this murderer lived down here in Temple Regis. So I decided to go and sort him out.’